STORY "Sessions relaunches Obama-era forensics review months after he shuttered it," by reporter Alan Pyke, published by Think orward on August 8m 2017.
SUB-HEADING: "Jeff Sessions slammed the door on a critical reevaluation of CSI-style courtroom testimony. Now he's opening it again, but how far?"
GIST: A national effort to shore up the credibility and narrow the
claims of forensic science will re-launch under new management less than
six months after Attorney General Jeff Sessions pulled the plug, the
Department of Justice announced Monday. The full scope of the changes made to the effort is yet unclear. But
the agency will stand up a new Forensic Science Working Group (FSWG),
led by career prosecutor Ted Hunt, to pick up work that paused in April
when Sessions declined to renew the four-year-old National Commission on
Forensic Science (NCFS). The new body’s “first order of business will be to resume work on the
Uniform Language for Testimony and Reports,” Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein said in a speech Monday. Those linguistic standards will
govern how prosecutors, judges, and expert witnesses characterize
forensic evidence to juries. The decommissioned NCFS was created in part to establish such
courtroom standards, after waves of exonerations and a high-profile
review of errors in hair and fiber testimony from federal criminal cases
brought a shower of skepticism about the kinds of hard evidence
Americans routinely see presented as absolute in fictional crime
stories. But while the new FSWG is taking up the signature programmatic work of
its defunct predecessor as its “first order of business,” it’s unclear
whether the new body will bring the same open-minded spirit to bear on
troubling questions about how courtroom forensic testimony has failed to
keep pace with actual forensic science. “In the forensic sciences community, we’re in the same position as
you: This sounds nice, but what exactly are the details?” American
Academy of Forensic Science board president Betty Layne DesPortes said
in an interview. “One thing we are waiting to see is how much this new
DOJ effort will include collaboration with the broader scientific
community.” The new body is a welcome development, she said, especially given how
disappointed the group was with Sessions’ decision to discontinue the
previous effort this past April. But to revive this work properly,
DesPortes said, the new group will have to keep the door open to the
kind of doubt that is essential to science but anathema to prosecutions. “One reason we supported [the defunct NCFS] so strongly, in addition
to having a bunch of members on the commission, is it was a
collaborative effort for forensic scientists and the broader scientific
community,” she said. “One thing pointed out repeatedly is we need more
research into the foundational bases for the forensic science
disciplines,” a type of research DesPortes said is only meaningful if
its designed and run by researchers from outside of the world of
professional forensics experts working in overburdened criminal labs. The NCFS charter expired in April, when Sessions declined to seek its
renewal. In the four years that NCFS operated, it found several damning
reasons to be skeptical of the claims forensic science claims in the
courtroom. A DOJ review found that FBI experts had overstated the reach
of hair and fiber forensics to juries in hundreds of cases over a matter of decades, including in more than two dozen death penalty cases. The criminal justice system’s credulous treatment of so-called bite-mark forensics, long a cause for professional alarm among scientists,
was finally officially questioned by a White House report last fall
deeming bite marks, tread marks, particular subsets of DNA-sample
evidence, and even bullet forensics to be unscientific. And reporters uncovered the continuing misuse of outdated arson investigation techniques that have already sent at least one innocent man to his death. The language guidelines Rosenstein promised Monday should go a long
way to rescue legitimate forensic science from the misuses exposed in
both individual exonerations and the kinds of sweeping reviews of
courtroom testimony that came to light in recent years. But deeper
scientific questions will remain even after expert witnesses come to be
informally governed by, for example, new prohibitions on presenting
their work as infallible. Sessions criticized skepticism about forensic evidence in the years
before he became the country’s top cop. When the Senate Judiciary
Committee held hearings in 2009 on the scientific community’s concerns
about forensic testimony, the then-senator used his time to downplay the scientists’ concerns.
His decision to discontinue the NCFS was widely interpreted as a stop
sign for such skeptical reevaluation of the methods underlying physical
evidence presented in courts. Monday’s announcement of a new working
group might mean someone changed the attorney general’s mind on the
subject — or it could be an extension of the former prosecutor’s long
campaign to tamp down doubts about forensics. The old commission included law enforcement actors but was led by scientists. The new body will be led by a career prosecutor."
The entire story can be found at:
The entire story can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
